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'Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expence,

And Splendor borrows all her rays from Sense. 180

His Father's Acres who enjoys in peace,

185

Or makes his Neighbours glad, if he encrease:
Whose chearful Tenants bless their yearly toil,
Yet to their Lord owe more than to the foil
Whose ample Lawns are not asham'd to feed
The milky heifer and deserving steed;
Whose rifing Forefts, not for pride or show,
But future Buildings, future Navies, grow:
Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
First shade a Country, and then raise a Town. 190

NOTES.

VER. 179, 180. 'Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expence, And Splendor borrows all her rays from sense.] Here the poet, to make the examples of good Taste the better understood, introduces them with a summary of his Precepts in these two fublime lines: for, the consulting Use is beginning with Sense; and the making Splendor or Taste borrow all its rays from thence, is going on with Sense, after she has led us up to Taste. The

art of this can never be fufficiently admired. But the Expression is equal to the Thought. This fanctifying of expence gives us the idea of fomething confecrated and set apart for facred uses, and indeed, it is the idea under which it may be properly confidered : For wealth employed according to the intention of Providence, is its true confecration; and the real uses of humanity were certainly first in its intention.

You too proceed! make falling Arts your care,

Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,
And be whate'er Vitruvius was before :
'Till Kings call forth th' Ideas of your mind,
(Proud to accomplish what such hands design'd,)
Bid Harbours open, public Ways extend,
Bid Temples, worthier of the God, ascend;

195

NOTES,

VER. 195, 197, . 'Till Kings - Bid Harbours open, &c.] The poet after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnificence and Expence, in the private works of great men, comes to those great and publick works which become a prince. This Poem

was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is fatirically alluded to in our author's imitation of Hor. Lib. ii. Sat. 2.

Shall half the new-built Churckes round thee fall) others were vilely executed, (ed by Turnpikes were made

thro' fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham breach had done very great mischiefs ; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly passable; and most of those which were repair

jobbs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrances of London itself: The proposal of building a Bridge at Weftminster had been petition'd against and rejected; but in two years after the publica

Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain,
The Mole projected break the roaring Main; 200
Back to his bounds their subject Sea command,
And roll obedient Rivers thro' the Land:

These Honours, Peace to happy Britain brings,
These are Imperial Works, and worthy Kings.

NOTES.

tion of this poem, an Act
for building a Bridge pass'd
thro' both houses. After
many debates in the com-
mittee, the execution was

left to the carpenter above-
mentioned, who would have
made it a wooden one ; to
which our author alludes in
these lines,

never drove a pile?

Who builds a Bridge that
Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile.

See the notes on that place. P.

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S

EE the wild Waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own fed Sepulchre appears, With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very Tombs now vanish'd like their dead!

NOTES.

THIS was originally | till Mr Tickell's Edition of his works; at which time the verses on Mr Craggs, which conclude the poem, were added, viz. in 1720. P. EPIST. V.] As the third Epistle treated of the ex

written in the year 1715, when Mr Addison intended to publish his book of medals; it was fome time before he was Secretary of State; but not published

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Imperial wonders rais'd on Nations spoil'd,
Where mix'd with Slaves the groaning Martyr

toil'd:

Huge Theatres, that now unpeopled Woods,
Now drain'd a distant country of her Floods:

Fanes, which admiring Gods with pride survey,
Statues of Men, scarce less alive than they!

NOTES.

tremes of Avarice and Profufion; and the fourth took up one particular branch of the latter, namely, the vanity of expence in people of wealth and quality, and was therefore a corollary to the third; so this treats of one circumftance of that Vanity, as it appears in the common collectors of old coins; and

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is, therefore, a corollary to the fourth.

VER. 6. Where mix'd with flaves the groaning Martyr toil'd] The inattentive reader might wonder how this circumstance came to find a place here. But let him compare it with y 13, 14, and he will fee the Reafon,

Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,

And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.

ruin what those were so injuriously employed in rearing: for the poet never loseth fight of his great principle.

For the Slaves mentioned above were of the same nation with the Barbarians here: and the Christians here, the Successors of the Martyrs there: Providence VER. 9. Fanes, which ordaining, that these should | admiring Gods with pride

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